Crusades Wiki:Frequently asked questions
Here you will find a list of Frequently Asked Questions which are often encountered across wikis by new users. General questions What is the Crusades Wiki? : The Crusades Wiki is a free content, freely editable online encyclopedia about everything to do with the Crusades, including the histories, movies, books, etc. Who owns the Crusades Wiki? : The Crusades Wiki is hosted by Wikia, a free wiki hosting service operated by Wikia, Inc., a for-profit organization founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Wikia receives all profit from the Google AdSense advertisements that you see on the Crusades Wiki, as well as all other Wikia wikis. Wikia is responsible for technical issues with the site; it also provides legal advice and is our legal Designated Agent. : However, the Crusades Wiki content, licensed under the GFDL, is not "owned" by anyone in the traditional sense of the word. Anyone can reuse it elsewhere or even download a database "dump" and make a mirror or "fork". When and why was the Crusades Wiki created? : The Crusades Wiki was started by Greyman in January 2008 as a project that would provide a more complete and comprehensive coverage of the Crusades than anywhere else on the internet. : Our first articles were forked from the English Wikipedia, although most articles will eventually be completely rewritten to the point that almost no Wikipedia material will remain. If you see something that you would like to work on around here, please do! Who is responsible for the Crusades Wiki content? : In short, you are! In fact, you can edit this very FAQ! However, note that since the Crusades Wiki is an unofficial, community-driven project, edited by hundreds of people unfamiliar with each other, we cannot possibly guarantee any degree of accuracy and validity, although we do strive for both accuracy and verifiability — this means that everyone should be able to verify the facts mentioned in every article. This is why all articles, and all new information added, should be referenced. : You can find who contributed to a particular article by looking at that article's edit history. What keeps the Crusades Wiki from being taken over by internet trolls? : Every Crusades Wiki article contains an edit history (accessible from the "history" tab by default), which records all edits to the article since it was created. In case someone makes a bad edit (intentionally or not) by vandalizing the article or inserting made up information, anyone can revert (restore) the article to an earlier, better revision. How can I contact the project? Are there forums here? : The Royal Court is the general place to ask questions about the Crusades Wiki or give feedback. However, if the question by its very nature only concerns the administrators, we recommend that you post the question on the Administrators' noticeboard instead, or bring it to the attention of an Administrator via their talk page. You can also try the Crusades IRC chat channel; for instructions on joining it, see Crusades Wiki:IRC. Legal questions Is the Crusades Wiki copyrighted? : Yes, all contributions are copyrighted by the people who made them. This means that if you edit an article, you hold copyright for the edits you made, but not for edits made by other people contributing to the same article. : The GNU Free Documentation License, which this Wikia uses, leverages the legal institute of copyright to ensure that everyone will have the right to freely access, modify and redistribute licensed content, no matter what. Therefore, do not contribute if you do not want your edits to be in turn mercilessly edited by others. : Quotes, pictures, etc. need to all be properly sourced using the provided templates so as to provide attribution to the correct person(s). Can I use the Crusades Wiki content elsewhere on the web? : Yes! However, this only applies to the text, licensed under the GFDL, and a select few free images. Most of our images are copyrighted by various parties or individuals, and used under the fair use clause for identification purposes, and using them for other purposes or in countries where fair use conditions do not apply may be illegal. : If you use the Crusades Wiki articles elsewhere, all you are legally required to do (by the license) is to add a copyright notice saying that the article is copyrighted and licensed under the GFDL, and a link to the original Crusades Wiki article. You can freely modify and redistribute the material, provided that you license your modifications under the GFDL as well. You cannot license it on other conditions or put it in the public domain, nor can you claim copyright for content you did not write yourself (everyone only holds copyright to the contributions they themselves made). Can I use the Crusades Wiki content on another wiki? :Yes, if the said wiki is itself licensed under the GFDL. This includes all of Wikia (with the exception of Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia, which are sister projects of Wikia and licensed under Creative Commons licenses) and most Wikimedia Foundation projects, including Wikipedia. In this case, the aforementioned copyright notice goes to the talk page of the said article; the restrictions still apply. Can I use content from other sites on the Crusades? :No. By default, every work is copyrighted and the author holds exclusive rights to it, unless they explicitly release all or some of them. You can insert GFDL or public domain text into articles verbatim, but not anything else. We care about copyright violations so much that we require it be reported, so that such violations can be removed, thus replacing them with original, non-violating content. Technical questions What wiki software does the Crusades Wiki use? : The Crusades Wiki (and the rest of Wikia) is powered by MediaWiki, the same software that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects use. Wikia also uses some third-party extensions, which are available to all hosted wikis. The exact details can be found at . Where should I report technical issues? : If they are indeed technical (like the site being down, or weird error messages) and not something within the users control (like templates), you can report them to the Wikia support channel on IRC, #wikia. Do I have to register? : While registration is by all means optional, it is, however, strongly recommended. You can view and edit pages as an anonymous user, but registration hides your IP address and gives you the ability to upload files, rename pages, and edit so-called semi-protected pages (after waiting a few days for your username to become established). : Most importantly, registration gives you an identity and makes you a full-fledged member of the Crusades Wiki community. After you register and make your first edit, another user will usually greet you on your talk page and give links to some useful information pages. Registration is the first step in earning reputation and respect, and who knows, maybe one day you will be given an award for your hard work, or even nominated for an administrator! What are namespaces? : Namespaces are large "storages" that group pages according to their function. Placing a page in a namespace causes the MediaWiki software to treat it in a special way. For example, this page is in the Crusades Wiki namespace, according to its prefix (Crusades Wiki:Frequently asked questions). Every namespace except Special (whose pages are generated by scripts, rather than being stored in the database) has an appropriate talk namespace, unless it is itself a talk namespace. For example, the talk page for the article named "Crusades" (located in the default namespace, without any prefix) resides at "Talk:Crusades". : Only the Wikia staff can add or remove namespaces or special pages. Neither regular users nor administrators can do that. The forum namespace is the only custom namespace so far. What is the difference between red, blue and light blue links? : Blue links point to existing pages (like Main Page), red links point to nonexistent pages (like MediaWiki:Nonexistent), and light blue links are either external or interwiki links: in short, links that are supposed to point outside of the Crusades Wiki. Where can I discuss pages? : Each page has a built-in talk page, which can be accessed via the "discussion" tab at the top of an article. While discussing articles, please limit your posts to the article content, not the article subject. For example, the talk page of an article should not be used to find out who thinks who was a great warrior, but for discussions whether (and how) it should be expanded, whether a certain image should be replaced or a section reworded are perfectly acceptable. Somebody reverted my edits, what should I do? : Generally, you should not revert to your version of the article in turn. This can start a revert war (also known as edit war), which is seen as disruptive because it prevents other contributors from improving the same article. Instead, question yourself whether the revert was justified, look at the edit history for the reason given, and try to settle the case on the article's talk page or user talk pages. What is a minor edit? : A minor edit is an edit that it is so non-noteworthy that users monitoring the article can usually skip it. Examples are spelling and grammar corrections, corrections of formatting and template usage. Addition and omission of content, as well as factual corrections, are not minor edits and should not be marked as such. : If you accidentally marked a non-minor edit as a minor one, make a dummy edit (an edit that affects the source wikitext but not the output, like changing one space to two or vice versa), mark it as non-minor, and explain the problem. What is a semi-protected page? : Semi-protected pages are pages that can only be edited by registered users that have been registered for four (4) days or longer. It is done to prevent pages from being vandalized by anonymous IP addresses or very new users who may have only registered to further their trolling behavior. Like full protection, it is only used in extreme cases. If full protection is a last resort measure, semi-protection can be thought of a "penultimate resort". Community/political questions Can I become an administrator? : Administrators hold much power, but also have much responsibility. There are a number of prerequisites for becoming an administrator, and whether or not a nomination succeeds largely depends on what other users think of you. Read Requests for user rights for details. Who defines the policies? : Most policies you will find have been laid down by administrators who have a long history in an administrative Wikia role. How can I contact an administrator? : Just as you would contact any other user: by leaving a message on their talk page. If you have no preference for a specific administrator, you can use the Administrators' noticeboard. Alternatively, you can join IRC; at least one administrator is usually present there at any given time. IRC is best used for reporting action that must be stopped immediately, such as mass blanking or mass move vandalism. What is this "Cabal" that certain users keep referring to? :There Is No Cabal. Regardless of what other, often disruptive, users may believe, there is no cabal. The term "cabal" usually comes up when a disruptive user is trying to place blame for their actions, and have been disciplined by an administrator. There are various users who feel that if anyone, especially anyone of the administration, disagrees with them, then there must be a cabal somewhere plotting against them, and only them. If another administrator, or user, disagrees with them on the same point, then they see that as irrefutable proof that there is a cabal—even though their views usually clash with the rest of the site's. Please do not allow these types of disruptive users to discourage you from editing the Crusades Wiki. Instead, please ignore them and continue your work, as they are almost always dealt with swiftly for their disruptive actions. Other questions What are those small symbols in the upper-right corner of many articles? : These are conflict symbols, and most of them are used to denote the Crusade and/or timeperiod in which the article subject happened in.